Mailing A Letter To The IRS With The A/C Running And A Wildflower Blooming In North Texas

I was up early and in the no longer all that cool pool soon after the sun showed up this 3rd Monday of April, which also happens to be April 15.

April 15.

A Day of Infamy which arrives once a year which causes me to drive to the Post Office to mail a letter to a federal agency known as the IRS.

I returned from the Post Office and decided to take a short walk around my neighborhood.

About 10 minutes into walking I came upon the big, colorful, orchid-like wildflower you see above.

Yesterday I read somewhere someone opining that the North Texas wildflower display is going to be more wild than this year's Hill Country wildflower display.  I do not recollect upon what data this opining person was basing his thinking that the 2013 North Texas wildflower display was going to outdo Hill Country.

I have only seen the Hill Country wildflower display once. The year was 2002, with the hills covered with color to a level I've not seen in the North Texas Prairies & Lakes Region.

I am guessing the return to extremely warm temperatures in North Texas will get the wildflowers a lot more excited about blooming than the bout of almost freezing that had the wildflowers shivering last week.

The outer world has become so warm at my location that I have had to resort to using the in-house mechanical cooling device known as air-conditioning to make the air in my abode suitable for habitation.

I have a bad feeling, the source of which I am not certain, that we are going to be having a record breaking HOT summer in North Texas. I may need to escape to the relative frigidity of Washington...

It Is April 15 So I Need To Mail A Letter To The IRS In Austin

About 4 this afternoon I figured out why I woke up with a headache this morning.

It is April 15.

Due date with the IRS.

I always put this off til the last minute. This year is no different. Except this year I sort of forgot about it, due to that headache woe.

That headache woe was likely brought on by my sub-conscious angsting over having to go through that miserable filling out an IRS form ordeal.

It is currently quarter after 5. I just stuck a stamp on the envelope that is going to the IRS. I guess I have 45 minutes to get to the Post Office.

So, I've got plenty of time.

Fort Worth's Moncrief's History of Conspiracy, Greed & The IRS Almost Destroyed This Legendary Texas Oil Family

Yesterday morning I opined that I thought the FBI should turn its attention to Fort Worth and investigate how it was the City of Fort Worth came to send in agents to raid Steve Doeung's home on Carter Avenue.

Find out who gave the orders and then find out their connection to the natural gas drillers currently poking holes all over Fort Worth and you'll have yourself another North Texas Corruption Scandal, maybe bigger than the current big one in Dallas.

Well, I had barely hit the publish button on "Largest Corruption Case in Dallas History, Is Fort Worth Next" when I got a message from my #1 Blogging Co-Hort, Elsie Hotpepper, telling me something very interesting that I find very bizarre that I had never heard a word about. Til Elsie told me.

Okay, let's say, hypothetically, that it was Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief who gave the raid on Steve Doeung's home order. We already know he is in deep with Conflicts of Interest due to making over $600,000 a year from the various gas drillers operating in Fort Worth.

Well, that is just ridiculous, you're thinking, Mayor Moncrief would not stoop so low as to order a raid on a private citizen to intimidate him into not fighting Chesapeake Energy and its plan to run non-odorized gas under his property.

Apparently Mike Moncrief has relatives, other Moncriefs, who do believe he will stoop so low as to engineer a raid when he's feuding with someone.

Back in the early 1990s Mike Moncrief was feuding with his relatives over the splitting up of the family fortune, going so far as to sue his uncle, Tex Moncrief, over how his grandparent's estate was divvied up. Tex Moncrief told his son, Charles, that Mike Moncrief was an "ingrate" for turning against his family.

The Moncrief Family Feud escalated to Fort Worth Scandal status early one morning in 1994 when a swarm of gun-toting IRS Agents raided the Moncrief's headquarters in downtown Fort Worth, removing a truckload of documents.

The IRS had been pointed towards the Moncrief documents by Moncrief accountant Billy Wayne Jarvis. Jarvis had been an accountant for the Moncriefs for 14 years and claimed he was afraid of getting in trouble for helping the Moncriefs commit tax fraud. And so he went to the IRS.

In addition to talking to the IRS, Jarvis was also talking to Mike Moncrief. Due to the connection between Jarvis and Mike Moncrief, the Charles Moncrief side of the Moncrief family suspected Fort Worth's current mayor helped bring the IRS ire on the family.

By 1996 the government dropped criminal charges against the Moncriefs, who settled with the IRS to the tune of $23 million. In 1998 Tex Moncrief lambasted the IRS and called for reform when he appeared before the United States Senate's Finance Committee. The Moncriefs were additionally outraged to learn in federal court that their accountant, Jarvis, had conspired with his lawyers to turn in the Moncriefs for a $25 million reward.

Charles Moncrief, hoping to restore his side of the Moncrief family's good name, wrote a book, Wildcatters: The True Story of How Conspiracy, Greed, and the IRS Almost Destroyed a Legendary Texas Oil Family.

Charles Moncrief makes it real clear, in his book, that his side of the family does not approve of Mayor Mike's side of the Moncrief family, charging Mike Moncrief with "living off the hard work his family has done in the oilfields."

The feud between the two sides of the Moncrief family continues in current day Fort Worth. The Charles Moncrief side of the Moncrief family contributed funds to the opponents of Mike Moncrief in the last mayoral election. An election which Moncrief won with 70% of the vote of the 6% of Fort Worth eligible voters who bothered to vote.

Were the Moncriefs the inspiration for the fictional Ewing family of Dallas fame?

Infernally Ridiculous System: Pay Your Taxes On Time

I guess sometimes I procrastinate. Particularly if there is a particularly pesky odious task I prefer to avoid. Like paying taxes.

I made it to the Post Office a bit after 5 to put my annual letter to the IRS in the mail. On the plus side, this is the first year in several that I didn't send in an extension request to put off dealing with the ugly business til August.

I don't know what made me be so responsible and on time this year. Maybe I sense that the government is desperate for money, no matter how puny the pittance.

I do feel sorry for the government.

I feel good that in my small way I'm helping send money to those who need it more than I do so they can get the big bonuses they so richly deserve. And help stimulate the economy.

I suppose I should go to one of those Tea Party deals. I got invited. It didn't seem like the sort of thing I'd enjoy though. I prefer coffee.

Scarlett Dumped Me For Ryan Reynolds

I'm shocked. After our long secret romance, Scarlett Johannson is suddenly marrying someone named Ryan Reynolds. How did this happen? Who is Ryan Reynolds? I don't even feel like I know Scarlett anymore. I don't feel like I ever really did.

Not having a clue as to who this was who stole Scarlett away from me I had to look it up. He's a Canadian. From Vancouver. How can she marry a Canadian? They say "eh" after almost every sentence, like they question every thing that comes out of their mouths. It is very very annoying after you hear dozens of "eh's".

That's Ryan Reynolds on the right. Eh? With the beard. Eh? Scarlett looks like she's lost weight. Eh?

Canadians also don't know how to properly pronounce other words. Like they can not say "about." It comes out as "aboot." Eh?

And Canadians leave off the word "the" when they speak of going to a hospital. They don't say, "They took him to the hospital." Canadians say, "They took him to hospital." Eh?

I worked for a short time for an ex-priest in Tacoma who married an ex-nun and who runs a rundown trinket store in Tacoma. He would say, "I will have to talk that over with staff." Not, "I will talk that over with the staff." Or, "my staff." That'd work too. I don't know why I find this annoying. Maybe, in the ex-priest's case, it's because his staff consisted of his ne-er-do-well son, the son's high school dropout wife, a dissipated elderly alcoholic, a blonde floozy and a yes girl who acted like Honey in the Doonesbury strip. It just seemed sort of pretentious to refer to that group as staff.

One time the ex-priest told me he considered me part of staff. Even though I'm in Texas. I was offput. I did not want to be part of staff. I no longer am part of staff. It was probably my bad attitude that got me removed from staff. Eh?

I also worked for the ex-priest's hugely obese sister. She sold chocolate and ate considerable volumes of the stuff. While being perpetually on the Atkin's Diet. She had all sorts of digestive and hygiene issues. Due to her size she fell down every once in awhile. I only saw one fall. It was like watching a large tree slowly crash to the ground. She never got hurt from the falls due to all that heft acting like a giant pillow. Or at least that's what I assumed. When I saw her fall I tried to help her get back up, but I can only lift 300 pounds tops.

Eventually I had enough and had to fire the ex-priest's hugely obese sister. She'd lied to and cheated one of my best friends one time too many. She was caught shorting her workers on pay. And then she made the mistake of shorting me. I never did learn the exact size of the fine that she had to pay to Labor & Industries. Except that I heard through the grapevine that it was substantial. The IRS caught up to her too. For not filing for 10 years.

I wonder who turned her in?